Review: UNDER A SKY SO BLUE – “The Spectacle Provides”

So…I had some goddamn medical mystery awesomeness and laid low like motherfucker because I HAD A STROKE! I did a quick review last time and that took me for-fucking-ever because it affected my fine motor skills on my right side. So typing was a fucking bitch of a time. But everything is OK because there are more problems but let’s ignore that shit because fuck it. Let’s get to reviewing and talking about music, history, and the lack of social graces.

From 2001 to 2005, I attended the beautiful campus of SUNY Potsdam, a diamond of cultural diversity awash in a sea of redneck recluse, identity crisis ( many people think they should act like southerners but can trace their lineage back for years to…northern New York….), and the brink of economic desperation and fear. The only constant was the feeling of displacement, friends (hey Charles), and the fact that your mind and heart and emotions really never synced up.

Listening to Under A Sky So Blue‘s album, titled “The Spectacle Provides” , brought me back to these times and feelings. They are a mixture of pure late 90’s and early 00’s awesomeness that technical bands today can not ever hope to recover or retain when they find it. You think playing 10,000 notes a beat is br00tal, but then this shit is just the sandpaper needed to take off your face.

Photo by Logan Lawson

This album is just an awesome cacophony of noise. A total reason to remember that music during those times were known for destruction and that their lyrics were introspective but weird and a little different. This band reminds me of a band I saw a few times called This Is Why, and play the same kind of music, where it is simple but harsh. It sometimes isn’t what you play, but how you play that matters.

I can not express how much I dig this album in a nostalgic way. The riffs, the emotion, the playing, it is all a big cluster fuck of awesome, a veritable orgy of greatness that leaves you sweaty and begging for more. This is what music should be like: aiming for an emotion, feeling or thought and displaying it through the music. A totality of feeling: your inner mind and emotions screaming in a tug-of-war causing you to seem slightly off kilter, but really just trying to figure out the right path.

This is just the album you might like if you are looking for fun old hardcore screaming and power-violence mixed together. If you can’t handle it, it may be best that you look away and now listen, but that is a lesson in futility. Hell, this album reminded me of the inner turmoil of the stroke and the ongoing medical onslaught that continues to this day. This is a band that begs to be heard, and is another homeroom for a Zegema Beach Records, who seem to be batting a goddamn thousand. Get this. Listen to it. Love it.

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